


wish i had a river

by rose_indigo_and_tom



Category: You Could Make a Life Series - Taylor Fitzpatrick
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:08:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28277385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rose_indigo_and_tom/pseuds/rose_indigo_and_tom
Summary: Jake gets the job at the coffee shop in summer, after a month of job hunting.The customers can be annoying sometimes, but there’s something actually really cool and nice about seeing the same people every day, learning what they like to drink and what their kids' names are. Being friendly goes a long way in the service industry, and Jake’s a friendly guy.He isn't expecting David to walk into the store, walk back into his life, three years after they broke up.
Relationships: David Chapman/Jake Lourdes
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	wish i had a river

**Author's Note:**

  * For [awkwardheart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/awkwardheart/gifts).



> Alex! This is for you, I hope you like it. I've never written David and Jake before, and don't actually love their story the way I think you do, but I tried to tell something true here anyway. I work at a coffee shop that just opened five days ago, and my life is insane. So if it's realistic, that's why. If it's bad, that's also why. 
> 
> Sometimes we get a second chance. Sometimes places are more than places. Sometimes someone orders a venti caramel macchiato and it isn't Starbucks.

Jake gets the job at the coffee shop in summer, after a month of job hunting and nothing working out. So, maybe it wasn’t exactly what he’d always planned on doing, but it was steady, and he likes the people he works with. The customers can be annoying sometimes, but there’s something actually really cool and nice about seeing the same people every day, learning what they like to drink and what their kids' names are. Being friendly goes a long way in the service industry, and Jake’s a friendly guy. His latte art could definitely use some work, and he doesn’t spend the time cleaning the floors under the fridges or the counters behind the espresso machine the way some of his coworkers do, but it’s a good job and he’s good at it. 

He becomes the manager after 15 months with the company, and it’s a little awkward at first, because he’s younger than many of his now-employees, and less experienced than most of them too. But at the same time, he’s a friendly person, and he’s good at smoothing things over, so it doesn’t really create problems like he was worried it might. 

All this to say, his job is great, his roommate Gabe is great, his parents and sisters are great, his life is going great. What could someone possibly want from life aside from a good job and good friends?

  
That’s rhetorical of course, and it only becomes more so after Gabe starts dating Stephen, his sister Allie moves in with her boyfriend, and his coworkers all seem to seem to be partnering off with people they met in church, or at chess club, or in college, or in some other equally wholesome meet-cute scenario. 

While Jake is still messed up over his junior year of university romance. 

It had been something that seemed inevitable, the way he and David had seemed to orbit each other for years, their names always coming up together in some class or another. David had been fiercely competitive, blunt, often rude, and utterly handsome. Jake, at least from his own perspective, had always been staring after him, open mouthed, like a character in a bad rom-com. And then they’d fucked and it had been brutal and exhilarating, and then they’d dated, and it had been the best six months of his life. And then he’d fucked it up.

The specifics of how and why he fucked it up are still too painful to really think about at all, even three years later. It wasn’t two sided at all, it was completely on Jake and his own poor decisions, and God knows he spent plenty enough time beating himself up about it. He’d barely seen David the last three semesters of college, retreating into himself and his blessedly David-free fraternity, but he knew that David was avoiding him too. Even when he had seen him, it had always been in the company of Kiro, a good-natured Russian exchange student David met after they’d broken up with, someone Jake tried and failed not to be jealous of. 

So, three years later, Jake is working at Camino’s, with his good job and good friends and good family, and David is probably off who-knows-where, with his perfect hair and Kiro and some job that’s probably better than making iced lattes and cleaning toilets all day. It’s pathetic, maybe, that he’s still hung up on it, but he is, anyway. 

And it goes on like this for a year. The shop is closed on Christmas Day, closes early on Christmas Eve, and Jake is counting down the hours until he gets to go home, where his family has the big meal ready, the presents stacked high under the Christmas tree, the whole nine yards. There are barely any customers, because most sane people are at home on Christmas Eve, and if they’re not at home, they’re not looking to sit down and stay awhile and eat two slices of avocado toast (hold the red pepper flakes). He’s idly playing Candy Crush on his phone, pretending not to see one of his employees scrolling Instagram, and just waiting until they’re close enough to close to clean the espresso machine. 

And then. 

It’s not like in a movie. There’s no bell on the door, and it’s a new building, so the door doesn't creak when it swings open. He’s just leaning on the counter and then all of a sudden a customer is clearing their throat and he jerks upright. 

And it’s David. He’s not alone, but the guy with him isn’t Kiro either. Jake tries desperately to act normal, to pretend like this is just any other customer interaction, but he thinks he fails.

“Hi, welcome to Camino’s, what can I get for you today?”

David’s scarlet, looking anywhere but at Jake’s face. The other guy answers.

“Yeah hi can I please get a twelve ounce latte?”

“Anything else for you today?” Jake hopes he sounds bored, he normally always sounds a little bored when he asks that question. 

“Uh yeah, whatever he’s having,” says the guy, and jerks his head at David.

“You don’t have to do that, Robbie,” David says, softly. 

“No man, it’s totally good, I got you.”

“Okay,” David’s voice is tight. “May I please have a sixteen ounce English Breakfast tea?”

“Yeah for sure. Your total’s going to be $12.66 today, would you like that for here or to go?”

David doesn’t glance at Robbie, just answers quickly “To go, please.”

Robbie pays, and Jake makes their drinks, and then they’re about to leave. And Jake knows he should let them walk away, but some traitor part of his brain says “Hey, David.”

David looks at him, confusion and a little bit of hurt in his eyes.

“Yes?”

“Listen. I’m sorry. I know I said it before, but it’s not any less true now.”

David very clearly looks uncomfortable, now, but he nods. “Thank you.”

Their shit isn’t fixed by that one interaction, not in the slightest. But he sees David again in the cafe. He doesn’t want to be hopeful, exactly, but there’s something good about knowing that David knows he works here, and keeps coming in anyway. Things between them aren’t so fucked up that David can’t stand to look at him anymore.

David’s birthday is basically right after New Year’s, something Jake obviously knew, but hadn’t really considered when he’d seen him on Christmas Eve. He’d seen him again twice since then, on Boxing Day and a few days after, but on his birthday, he comes in again with Robbie and Kiro and a few other guys.

Georgie, one of Jake’s old fraternity brothers, is leaning against the bar in front of the Point of Sale, purposefully making a nuisance of himself, asking for increasingly ridiculous drinks that Jake has no intention of making. When David and the rest of his group come in, a few emotions pass over Georgie’s face (and Jake’s too, he’s sure). It all happens so fast from there, people in David’s group just tipsy and cheerful enough, and Georgie also just tipsy and cheerful enough that he ends up sitting down with them. 

It’s painfully awkward. And amazing. And terrifying. And the best thing Jake has felt in a while. 

Their shit isn’t fixed by that night, either, but they start texting, a little, after. It’s like the tiniest glimpses into David’s life, the tiniest reminders of why he fell in love with him in the first place. Jake worries over every message he sends in a way he’s never really done before, and savors the brusque replies like they’re effusive paragraphs. He doesn’t exactly want to, but he does. 

He learns what David’s been doing for the past few years, how he met Robbie, about Kiro’s fiance. He gives David updates on Allie and Nat, tells him funny stories about working at the shop, asks for his opinion on ridiculous either/or’s. It’s nice. For all that he’d thought before that his life was great, he’d forgotten the thrill of this kind of thing, the tingles in his spine when he sees a new message from David. It’s like being eighteen again, in both the best and worst possible way. 

One night David stays after close. He’d been in with his friends for a late drink, and they’d all gotten to talking, Jake in between making cappuccinos. All the rest of the guys are ready to go, but Jake and David find themselves still engrossed in their sort of nothing conversation. David wipes down the tables, insisting that he can’t just watch Jake clean the machines and count the money without making himself useful in some way. 

They’re walking out together, walking out in a way Jake has done with various coworkers hundreds of times over the past 18 months. And yet something about the moment is charged. It’s the first time they’ve been alone together since they broke up. Jake’s hands are trembling a little bit, enough that he fumbles his keys trying to get them in the lock. He does it, finally, and looks over at David. 

David’s looking at him, an inscrutable kind of look on his face. He glances behind himself, must see only their reflection in the darkened windows of the hair salon. Jake’s practically holding his breath and how close they are, how the moment lingers. And then David’s taking him by the elbow, pressing a soft kiss to his lips. 

Jake’s heart stops. He kisses back for a moment, and then pulls away. It’s late, he’s tired, and they’re basically standing in a strip mall parking lot.

“I like you, a lot, but can we revisit this tomorrow?” He knows his words are going to sound terrifying, but he’s not sure of any other way to say them. 

David, indeed, looks a little stricken. “Of course.” He steps away. “Good night, Jake.”

There’s more. There’s the whole part where they meet up the next morning to talk about what happened, for Jake to apologize again. There’s the part where they have amazing sex in David’s empty apartment where he lives without roommates. There’s the part where they agree to start a relationship again, where they admit they’ve both been hung up on each other since college. 

Those are all great parts. The best parts. Getting to kiss David again after three years is great. But it’s all facilitated by their nights in the coffee shop. By the fact that David happened to wander in. By David’s amazing forgiveness. By his courage. By his willingness to try again, to see the best parts of Jake. 

Jake’s not going to work at Camino’s forever. He might not even work there next year. But they’ll go there again, together and apart, and it’s not going to be that place that Jake worked because he couldn’t find a job, or that place where Jake did some great work and met some great people. It’s going to be the place where their relationship happened, for the second time. College had been, his last three semesters, a constant reminder of David and their relationship and the way he fucked it up. Camino’s is a constant reminder of David and their relationship and the way it wasn’t actually fucked up forever.


End file.
